Bradley-Grube Review of The Canyons

The Canyons (2013)

I watched only because I thought to myself "It can't be THAT bad!"...oops!

[1/10 · 11 August 2013]

I read an article yesterday in which the writer of this movie, Bret Easton Ellis, said that he couldn't understand the hate for this movie. Really? You don't know? How about the fact that you cast a porn star as one of your leads? There's one reason. James Deen gives you a performance here that is no different than what he gave you in "Anal Buffet 8" (not making that up folks). I half expected him to show up at Lindsay Lohan's door in a pizza delivery uniform. The other lead, Nolan Gerard Funk, was slightly better than Deen...slightly. Here's another reason for the hate. The script was dismal. Christian(Deen) and Tara(Lohan) are living together in a huge house in LA where they enjoy, or at least Christian does, an open relationship where Christian gets his meat and two veg off sharing Tara with other men. When he finds out that Tara is having an affair with the lead in a movie he is financing(Funk), he goes nuts. Huh? Christian has Tara followed everywhere and starts messing with Funks's character by hacking his bank account and pretending to have him replaced in the movie. At this point Christian is in firm control over Funk's character and Tara. So much so that he decides to murder Funk's ex girlfriend?! Say what? To top it all off, he confesses to Tara that "something happened" to this poor girl and needs an alibi. All this while Tara is trying to break off the relationship. Christian is of course upset that Tara is leaving...I think...You know, I couldn't tell. That's how good Deen is here. I won't give away the ending because I had no idea what the heck happened at the end...yeah. To summarize, this movie had terrible acting, a ridiculously bad story and dialog fit for Deen's main profession. Don't see it, really. I thought the critics were being too hard on this movie and I was wrong. So very very wrong.